A true statement on all counts, as Brett knew from personal experience way back when.

And not at all the actions of a manipulative, abusive man.

“But what about Chloe? Would she be willing to leave wherever she’s staying and meet up with us all?” Jeff asked, looking hopeful and worried at the same time, his beer untouched on the table. “I mean, I’m pretty sure she would if Ella asked her,” he continued without pausing long enough for Brett to respond. “She’d never ask Ella,” Jeff said. “She’s careful not to pit my sister against me, which is why I was so glad to know that they’ve been in touch. Chloe still considers Ella and me part of her family.”

He sipped from his beer then. And Brett waited.

Being duplicitous with Jeff, for whatever reason and in whatever fashion, did not sit comfortably with him.

“But if Ella suggested a gathering to Chloe,” Jeff continued as soon as he put his glass down, “Chloe would probably agree.”

“I can’t guarantee anything,” Brett said, his mind calculating. “But I think we might be able to work something out.” Once he explained the plan. “We could meet up in LA someplace,” he said. Santa Raquel was definitely out, for obvious reasons.

Such as Cody somehow letting his father know that the town was familiar to him.

And while taking Chloe back to Palm Desert for a weekend might help her realize that she missed home, wanted to be there, belonged there, Brett was fairly certain that, for those very reasons, Ella would refuse to be a part of that plan.

“I’ll go anywhere,” Jeff said. “You name the time and place, and I’ll be there.”

“I think it might be best to suggest the idea, and then to let Chloe choose a time and place.” Brett was thinking out loud now. “We want her to feel comfortable and like she has some level of control...”

“That woman has all the control where I’m concerned,” Jeff said, shaking his head with a bit of an affectionate grin on his face. “Has since the day I laid eyes on her.”

“I remember.” Brett grinned now, too. He and Jeff had been on a bike trip along the coast—Brett’s choice for his bachelor party—and had stopped at a small but very popular diner along the ocean road. Chloe, who’d been in culinary school, had been managing the place. Jeff had seen her from across the room and had dropped his glass of spiked tea. He’d said the glass was wet. That it had slipped.

What it had done was summon the manager over to their table, and she’d helped mop him up.

They’d both ended up chatting with her. She’d asked where they were from. Jeff had told her that they were bent on raising hell one last time before Brett got married the next weekend to his baby sister.

Before they left that day, Jeff had asked Chloe to the wedding.

And they’d been together ever since.

Unlike the couple whose wedding had been Jeff and Chloe’s first date.

Brett and Ella hadn’t made it together, but as Brett boarded his plane half an hour later, he was determined that Jeff and Chloe would.

There had to be some happy endings.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

ELLA HADN’T SLEPT well the past two nights and was fighting irritability when she went into work Friday morning. Chloe’s constant need to have everything shiny clean, because Ella liked it that way, had bothered her that morning. While she appreciated Chloe’s attempt to keep Ella’s life as normal as possible, she also just wished Chloe would relax. She was tired of living with someone who walked on eggshells.

Then she ended up behind a slow driver in the passing lane on her way into work. By the time she got to work, the closest parking lot was full and she had to park in the off-site garage. And then an orderly on the shuttle from the employee parking garage to the hospital’s main campus was on the phone the entire trip, talking twice as loud as he should have been.

And there was a hair in her ponytail that was pulling. She’d redone the thing twice, but still felt a little jab to her scalp when she moved her head.

Standing in the elevator, it occurred to her that Chloe’s walking on eggshells in the apartment might not be as much about living with her as she’d thought, but rather another symptom of being a victim of domestic violence.

Then she was irritated with herself for taking so long to figure that out. And felt even guiltier for the ill thoughts she’d had regarding Chloe’s obsessive cleaning.

The NIC unit’s on-duty child-life specialist was standing in the hall just outside the elevator when Ella got off.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” Jacqui said, though Ella was half an hour early for her shift. “Henry’s being discharged this morning. Nora’s taking him home.”

Henry. The baby of the young abuse victim Ella had turned over to Lila.

They’d been expecting the orders to come through for the past two days. “The Lemonade Stand’s ready for him,” she said, switching immediately into work mode. Child services had been up the day before. Without any formal proof against Ted Burbank or Nora, they were releasing the baby solely into his parents’ care.

Lila had police and lawyer members of the High Risk team working to establish proof that would help prevent Ted from having unsupervised access to his son until he got help.

In the meantime, the man wouldn’t know where to find his wife and son, or be able to get to them if he did.

“No,” Jacqui said, twisting her fingers together as she walked beside Ella and, when Ella slid her pass card through the reader, followed her onto the unit. “She’s taking him home, home. She’s in his pod now, packing up the things she had in there for him.”

Stopping in her tracks, Ella stared at the woman whose prime responsibility was advocating for the patients in her care. And secondarily to their families. “What do you mean home, home? She’s going to her home at the Stand, right?”

Jacqui shook her head. “She’s going home. I thought her permanent address on the paperwork was a mistake so I went in to have her correct it, and she’s not going back to the Stand.”

Ella hadn’t gotten a call...

Pulling her cell phone out of the pocket of her scrubs, she glanced at the screen. No missed calls. No voice mail. No text messages.

Lila would have called. The High Risk team would have been notified...

“There must be some mistake,” she said, turning toward Henry’s pod. They had pictures of Nora’s back. The woman had talked to the police and was willing to testify against her husband...

“I thought so, too.”

“Did she say she checked out of the Stand?”

“She didn’t. Check out, that is. She said she just decided on the way in this morning.”

Before seven in the morning? Right after waking up? She’d decided to take her baby out of a safe environment and back to a dangerous home that spontaneously?

“I’ll talk to her,” Ella said.

Thus began a morning that didn’t improve as the day wore on.

* * *

DRIVEN BY A tension he couldn’t assuage, Brett finished business on Friday afternoon and sped most of the way to Santa Raquel. Was he that worried about Jeff? Just determined to be there for his friend as his friend had been there for him? Or that eager to get the business with Ella behind him?

He asked the questions. And had no answers.

Something he didn’t usually abide. There would be no unanswered questions in his life. He’d made the promise to himself when he’d left his marriage with the intention of living alone for the rest of his life.

He wasn’t going to risk hurting anyone as he’d hurt Ella. Or worse, risk hurting anyone as his father had hurt his mother and him. The nightmares he’d had after finding out he was going to be a father had ceased. The memories had faded. But they’d served their purpose.

He’d spoken to a counselor about them, of course. Who’d talked to him about fear versus reality. About the residual effects of growing up in an abusive home. But he knew that statistically, abusers had very often grown up as victims. That the pattern of abuse perpetuated itself. His parents had both grown up in abusive homes, had promised each other that abuse would not enter their home. Trusting that, because they knew better and so badly needed and wanted a safe home, they’d break the pattern.